Richard C. Levin, the President of Yale, just popped its alumni an email announcing the expansion of Yale College — growing the hallowed university by two residential colleges:
I am pleased to announce that the Yale Corporation has authorized increasing the enrollment of Yale College through the creation of two new residential colleges. This expansion will allow us to make an even greater contribution to society by preparing a larger number of talented and promising students of all backgrounds for leadership and service.
This is an excellent time for Yale to expand. Harvard and Yale had to reject most of all the applicants who applied to matriculate this Fall — many of whom were exceptional and some of whom were the sons and daughters of Harvard and Yale graduates — legacy applicants. The questions remains: will the increase of placement supply affect the brand integrity of this exclusive — and arguably finest — undergraduate education? What do you think?
You may not have heard but we’re entering what is called the “echo boom:”
The Echo Boom generation is an expansive term for children born between roughly 1988 and 1992 (though sources disagree on the exact years). In 1989 the number of live births exceeded four million for the first time since 1964, and the Echo Boom peaked in 1990 (33 years after the peak of the Baby Boom) with 4.16 million live births, the greatest number since 1962 in the United States.[1] Children of this generation are called Echo Boomers, a reference to the fact that the generation falls between about 30 and 36 years after the Baby Boomer generation, and thus many Echo Boomers are the children of Baby Boomers.
While the lure of a larger incoming class of elite and monied incoming Freshmen into their undergraduate programs may be too attractive to resist, there is always the possibility that the quality and exclusiveness of Yale — its brand reputation — could well be eroded by this expansion. Also, since one of Yale College’s appeal is the tradition behind each of its residential college, I wonder how incoming Freshmen will take to becoming part of starting a new tradition?
There is a serious deficit of elite university inventory. We are going through a renaissance of academia and a national passion to be truly rewarded with a spot at a top-five undergraduate education where a second tier college won’t do. Many universities are desperately trying to expand not just their capacity but also their services, their resources. And, why not generate more income and also expand the ranks of a very devoted, generally well-healed alumni who will generally do whatever they can to give back on the investment that Yale made in them — and that devotion is palpable.
So, what to do, what to do?
What’s more, many of the children of baby boomer Yalies can’t get their children into Yale. So, many of these expansion are being made to be able to accept more legacy student as well as the growing tide of superboys and supergirls who have their hearts set on the Harvards, Yales, Princetons, Berkeleys, Stanfords, and the lesser Ivies.
Anyway, for you amusement, here’s the letter that President Richard C. Levin sent its alumni (also viewable via the web):
Dear Yale Alumni and Parents:
I am pleased to announce that the Yale Corporation has authorized increasing the enrollment of Yale College through the creation of two new residential colleges. This expansion will allow us to make an even greater contribution to society by preparing a larger number of talented and promising students of all backgrounds for leadership and service.
We will achieve this goal while ensuring that the quality of the Yale College educational and social experience will be as extraordinary as ever.
As I stated in February, when we shared the report of the Study Group to Consider New Residential Colleges, the last significant increase in the size of the Yale College student body came with the admission of women in 1969. By 1978, undergraduate enrollment first reached 5,200, and it has remained between 5,150 and 5,350 ever since. When women were first allowed to apply to Yale College, the number of applications soared immediately from 6,781 to 10,039, and the number fluctuated between 9,000 and 13,000 until 2001, when it began a steady rise to its current level of 22,500, spurred by dramatic improvements in financial aid, wider awareness of Yale’s accessibility, the extension of full need-based aid to international students, and a growing appreciation of the quality of a Yale College education. Along with the rise in applications has come an equally dramatic increase in the percentage of those admitted who accept Yale’s offer, from 53 percent when I became president, to over 70 percent in recent years.
The principal result of these changes in the admissions picture is that Yale College has become significantly more selective. From 1969 to 2000, the percentage of applicants admitted to Yale College ranged from 18 to 27 percent. It was above 20 percent as recently as 1999. Today, Yale College admits fewer than 10 percent of its applicants. Admissions officers agree that in each of the past several years we have denied admission to hundreds of applicants who would have been admitted ten years ago.
The mission of Yale College is to seek exceptionally promising students of all backgrounds from across the nation and around the world and to educate them, through mental discipline and social experience, to develop their intellectual, moral, civic and creative capacities. The aim of this education is the cultivation of citizens with a rich awareness of our heritage to lead and serve in every sphere of human activity. For three centuries, we have made this aspiration a reality, to the great benefit of the nation and, increasingly, the world. Today, we have a long queue of highly qualified applicants who collectively would allow Yale to make an even greater contribution to society if more could be educated here. In addition, since the late-1970s, when the undergraduate population ceased to grow, Yale is larger in virtually every dimension: faculty, staff, library and museum resources, and physical presence. We are well poised, therefore, to expand.
Our 12 existing residential colleges are admired because they create intimate communities and a superb environment for learning. The new colleges will emulate Yale’s proven model with a master, dean, fellows, and students forming a close-knit family, supported by the highest caliber public and private spaces for living and study. With an anticipated opening in 2013, these colleges will allow us not only to increase the undergraduate student body by about 15 percent, but also to alleviate crowding throughout the residential college system. We expect to reduce the population of the existing colleges by approximately 140 students and largely eliminate the need for annex housing.
Our goal is that students in every residential college, old and new, will have an even more robust and enlivening experience as a result of this expansion. Thus, we are adding facilities in the vicinity of the new colleges that support academics and student life, including classroom space, a student café, exercise facilities, a theater, and more. We are also expanding the faculty to sustain our favorable ratio of students to teachers, particularly in highly subscribed majors, and we are growing our system of academic advising. New resources will augment curricular development, student research, study abroad, and the whole range of extracurricular activities so important to a Yale education.
The new colleges will be built in a triangle just north of the Grove Street Cemetery bounded by Prospect, Canal, and Sachem Streets, creating a new sense of the geography of our campus by enlarging the footprint of Yale College. I believe that the presence of undergraduate residences north of Grove Street will alter the perception that Science Hill is “too far away” from the “center” of campus. In fact, the site proposed for the new colleges is only three blocks north of Elm Street, which divides the Old Campus and the Cross Campus. As the Study Group Report indicates, the new colleges have the potential of making the whole campus seem smaller, more effectively linking Science Hill with the historic “center” through the proper treatment of Prospect Street, the creation of appropriate “stepping stones” along the way, and the development of facilities for student activities at, near, and beyond the site of the new colleges.
To support the expansion of Yale College, the Corporation has authorized an increase in the goal of the Yale Tomorrow fundraising campaign from $3 billion to $3.5 billion. I am delighted to announce that, thanks to generous commitments from a handful of leadership donors, we have already secured $140 million in gifts and pledges for this purpose.
Almost 80 years ago, Edward H. Harkness, B.A. 1897, gave the funds to create Yale’s residential college system. He saw the residential colleges as a way to sustain the collegiate spirit in a school that was fast becoming a university. Since then, Yale College has grown in ways that Harkness never predicted. The student body has doubled, women have been enrolled, and young people have been welcomed from more than 100 nations. Remarkably, the members of this vast and vibrant enterprise still consider themselves part of a family. This is Harkness’s great legacy, and one that we will preserve in a new era of expansion. I am grateful for the outstanding work of the Study Group for providing us with wise counsel on how to achieve this objective.
Sincerely yours,
Richard C. Levin
So, what do you think?
Comments (14)
The reasons for doing this is two-fold and definitely have serious impact on other equivalent level universities.
1) $$$– the almighty dollar. Does Harvard or Stanford have the space to create 2 more residential colleges? Do they have the financial holdings to create, populate and pay for instructors?
I don’t think Harvard has more space– though Princeton might. Stanford probably doesn’t have the space and given the cost of land right now in Silicon Valley, there’s no way they can get more space and more instructors out of the budget.
2) the number of students they bring in will give them the ability to bring in more tuition and increase their visibility and create a bit more momentum for their curriculum, their faculty and also for the bottom line. They can let in more students who wouldn’t have the financial ability to come in but would bring more diversity to the university.
ok soapbox over
Yale is lucky that it lives in New Haven for just that very reason; however, I think the added income is not important to Yale at the moment because of the current holdings that are in excess of $22B.
What I think it is about is exactly what Mr. Levin said, which is:
“This expansion will allow us to make an even greater contribution to society by preparing a larger number of talented and promising students of all backgrounds for leadership and service.”
Which is code for: more alumni and more influence on culture, business, and politics.
Totally agree. And when you have larger numbers of alumni and students that your competitors– who wins? The students or the university because its’ rep gets better at taking in more students
My ex went to Yale and where Yale excels is in Customer Service. In addition to the world’s best staff and an embarrassment of resources, what Yale offers is the best undergraduate experience in the history of education outside of Oxbridge.
What that means is that my ex really never wanted to even go abroad because going abroad meant leaving New Haven.
The biggest difference between Yale and GWU (aside from all of the others) is that GW expects its students to appreciate being there while Eli Yale never ceases to show its appreciation in every way — both current students as well as their parents and the alumni — which makes Yale the best place to attend and makes all those who have spent four in New Haven generous for life.
In terms of customer support, appreciation for students, and general return on investment — including the very real favoritism lavished on legacy applicants and generous financial aid for all who make the cut — is what makes Yale the best.
Oh yeah, the academics, too. But a lot of colleges and universities have excellent professors, many of whom were Yalies. Academics is not what makes a college great, it is access, it is resources, and it is customer service.
IMHO
I heard that Vanderbilt treats their students like valued customers which is obviously the Yale way. I think it’s interesting that the uni’s that are doing ok are the ones going out of their way to be good to the students because after all they are “paying customers” .. and a bad rep will haunt them.
GWU and the rest who make you think that students should kiss the hallowed ground– should think about kissing something else (like goodbye to attend other colleges)
Stevie » And, to be honest, the reason why GWU has to charge over $50,000/year is because nobody would ever consider donating money to GW — they didn’t create a “camp” experience. It is a practical school — you go there to become a bureaucrat. Means to an end. None of my fellow-GWU alum look back at their alma mater with misty eyes the way they do at some of the better “service” schools. GW has no foundation to speak of. It operates hand-to-mouth.
I wonder if and how much of this is a reaction to Harvard’s big new expansion, which is a fifty-year project to build up a new site in Allston. Regardless, hard to say that Harvard with its $38b endowment couldn’t come up with some real estate (and in fact the school’s surreptitious purchasing of land through third-party agents has gotten a lot of Cantabridgians and Bostonians upset). Regardless, the question about dilution or expansion has more to do with the students that Yale is rejecting than the students that they’re accepting. If they feel like they’re seeing more candidates who they’d like to let in than they can, than this can only be good for them, both because they’ll be able to bring in more people that they like and — in my opinion more importantly — there won’t be as much risk in deciding between two candidates that you’re rejecting the one that will make a larger contribution, be more successful, have a better experience, donate more money, etc. If you can have both, why not have both? As long as they’re not in a position of admitting people solely in order to fill a number it’s to their benefit.
Anyway, that’s my two cents. It’ll be interesting to see what this announcement provokes from Harvard, Stanford, Princeton and the like, who’re continually playing an increasingle unhealthy game of branding one-upsmanship.
James » I agree with you 100%, especially were we to both agree that Yale and the Ivies and the top-25 have noble aims.
What I take from what you and Mr. Levin said, both on-topic, is that the main and most important goal is to choose candidates who will “make a larger contribution, be more successful, have a better experience, donate more money,” with the focus on really being able to make dibs on the presidents and Nobel laureates of the future when they’re only pups: a Harvard Man or someone who would Eli proud.
“When the sons of Eli
Break through the line
That is the sign we hail
Bulldog! Bulldog!
Bow, wow, wow
Eli Yale!”
Chris — of course you’re right in terms of the schools wanting to claim ‘dibs on the presidents and Nobel laureates of the future.’ But this is only of significance if they really think that the extra students that they’re admitting might be those people — which of course might not always be the case. (Though with such a small sample size it probably is).
James » Yes. But it couldn’t hurt. The folks they choose anyway might not become the president, anyway, and I know quite a few “duds” from Harvard and Yale who are only “useful” because they’re eager to donate money to their college — probably to try to lock up a legacy spot. However, I think the expansion has mostly to do with making it possible for Yale to be able to accept both the best students, based on a meritocracy, as well as the best children of the best Yalies and those pillars of society who wished they were. In other words, maybe there will be more space for the Gentleman Cs. My friend, the country’s best telecom lawyer, told me that he would be unable to get into Yale Law these days. I wonder how many of tomorrow’s leaders can no longer make it into the top schools? OK, OK, some of the coolest people I know have graduated from Ivies, so I have nothing but admiration for them.
Levin is all about his global thing. He’s always talking about China this and India that. His true vision is to make Yale a GLOBAL university. I’ll bet that the expansion is for an incoming global student body. I remember my year, we had like 2 people from Germany, maybe 3 from Malaysia, 2 from Japan, actually maybe 1 from Japan, etc…. If you think about it, that’s some mad low numbers for an entire country. Only a few universities can make a truly global brand and the true leaders of tomorrow are the globe-trotting elite who basically divide their time between New York, London, Paris, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, maybe Dubai now. Yale is going to go for this increasingly larger and larger global group
Lars » Additionally, as my friend James, who is pursuing an existential crisis in Berlin after his first year at Harvard College, told me, “Chris, Harvard is offering such exceptional student aid for undergrads that they’re really hungry for overseas students who are required to pay retail.” Does that make sense to you?
Chris, I’m pretty sure that need-blind policy is extended to foreign students as well. The likely situation is that foreign applicants for the undergrad are likely to be fairly wealthy and hence will pay retail, just like a wealthy US student. Since university education is fairly cheap around the world (high education prices seems to be a US phenomena), I suspect that it is mostly the wealthy (or those studying at the “American School of XX”, who are also pretty wealthy too) that are considering studying in the US. Perhaps, this “need-blind” policy is not so well advertised to the everyday person in another country and thus they think that they have to pay the full $50,000 and then don’t apply.
Lars » That may well be true. When I went to the country’s most expensive school, GWU (we beat Middlebury), all of the foreign students were generally exceptionally wealthy and, in the case of GW, were being fed from the diplomatic corps in DC. I hate to admit it but I don’t think that $50,000/year is an unreasonable price-point for putting a child through the best schools on the planet, especially when yuppies are spending tens-and-hundreds of thousands of dollars on cars and golf club fees. But, that’s another story.